We started this morning with a marvelous road report about America in the last few weeks. It conained not only an account of some of the ordinary wonders we take for granted in this fine land, but also the assorted treasure of friendship, family and life itself. We prefer to start the new week with that, rather than the meteorological metaphors in which we are trapped.

All that stuff in the slide that starts this brief introduction to a week already in motion is going on. If we were to borrow the NOAA part of the metaphor, the current pulsing cloud over Israel, Lebanon, Gaza and Tehran would be the vortex. We know something is coming. We are told it could be as soon as this week. Around that are elements that contribute or react to the raging wind it will create.

Some of it is as far away as Asia, where rockets are being moved by Pyongyang as part of a long campaign to attract attention to an old area of trouble already rising in heat.

Some of it is reflected in an outer ring of turmoil in our domestic affairs, which have a steady and increasing volume of noise and the crackle of lightning. There may be choices in Vice Presidential nominees today. There is warning about Iran’s nuclear capability and a long series of policy failures that has everything and nothing to do with actual fact in a matter that could involve rockets carrying some sort of payload in days.

Our economy is quivering in anticipation. The statistics we use for planning and rational decision-making are now revealed as supporting fiction to other objectives. An increase in jobs may actually reflect people having to work more part time to keep up with a money printing miasma that has doubled the cost of nearly everything we need or used to enjoy. It is not remotely sustainable, we all know that although it is not reported on what i’s still called “news” instead of what it is, and things will adjust themselves. Probably abruptly, in something resembling a “panic as these things do. Like 1929.

Anyway, it is a nice week with pleasant skies and NOAA says Hurricane Debbie only has winds over 80 knots at the moment. It may get stronger, they say, and this could be the start of a hurricane season with as many as 25 named storms.

We have tried to walk the line on this, avoiding either of the partisan pitfalls to the side and leaping over the ones in between. We recognize that even if bad, this is probably not “doom,” at least at the moment, and there is nothing new in any of these storms of human affairs. This is one is different only because of the intensity now brought to the forecasting. And the fact that it is happening today.

So, stand by. Enjoy what we have while we can, but keep at look at the sky.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com